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Post by kevut2002 on Jun 13, 2018 14:14:58 GMT
Hello everyone! I am looking for advice on setting up my new room. Replacing the floor is not an option at the moment (would love to rip up the carpet). The room is half thick carpet and half raised hardwood ( maybe laminate). I will be tracking drums, vocals, acoustics and more. I would really like to set my desk on the hardwood so I can look out the window and get more natural light...but would it be better to save the hardwood for tracking and put my desk on the carpet? I don't want things to be too dead while tracking. If I did put it on the carpet it would be pushed against that railing poking out in the bottom left of the picture. That would put about a 3 foot gap away from that wall (over the stairs). Another thing to think about it putting drums on carpet and putting my desk on the hardwood and just tracking acoustics at my desk..Thanks for any advice! Also if I do put my desk on the carpet I won't be able to put bass traps on both sides because of a vent in one corner. Thanks !
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Post by Michael Lawrence on Jun 13, 2018 17:14:06 GMT
Hello Kevut. Welcome to the forum. I've always been in the minority on this, but I prefer a dead recording room to a live one any day. My reason is simple: I can always add reverb to a recording, but I can't take it out. But I work primarily in live sound, where the room is always the enemy and we close-mic everything, and that carries over to my studio approach. If I were you, I'd wait for a better opinion to come along.
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Post by Hexspa on Jun 14, 2018 2:08:05 GMT
I'd say look out the window and forget about the carpet. When you consider the whole audible spectrum, carpet absorption only covers half and, even then, not very deeply (reference needed). Mr. Lawrence is right in that deadness is a technical choice for great rooms but a necessity for small spaces like yours. While I agree that most people perceive 'liveness' in the upper ranges, the lower spectral half is also giving you hell.
You have a nice-looking room. Put a bunch of absorption in it then use your VSTs to add the sound of million-dollar places. Lastly, I'm noticing a lot of 'I don't want, I can't etc.' in your post. I advise you to be aware of that, try to have an open mind, and that'll serve you in your acoustics journey.
Thanks.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 14, 2018 12:22:04 GMT
If I were you, i would definitely cover that carpet with something movable, hard reflective surface, for example plywood.. I have a _really_ small room and i have laminate flooring. Treat your room everywhere else you can, but keep your floor reflective. Even in a small room, and your room doesn't even seem that small. If you can't find anything to cover up that carpet, then i would probably put your desk and mixing position on carpet. But i wouldn't personally settle for that, i'd find something to cover up that carpet.
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Post by kevut2002 on Jun 14, 2018 14:10:32 GMT
Thanks for the help Guys! I have been thinking about using some kind of plywood over the carpet. "Lastly, I'm noticing a lot of 'I don't want, I can't etc.' in your post. I advise you to be aware of that, try to have an open mind, and that'll serve you in your acoustics journey". I'm not trying to have a closed mind. I'm just saying that I can't rip the carpet up right now money wise. I just bought the house and have other things to pay for including acoustic treatment. Right now I'm thinking of putting the desk by the window and maybe putting down some plywood under my drums of the carpet. I am planning of treating the ceiling above the drums and my desk. I'm also thinking of moveable gobos so I can put them behind the drums or vocal mic. Thanks for your tips guys!
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Post by Michael Lawrence on Jun 14, 2018 15:25:50 GMT
If you don't have Ethan's book, I would start there. It'll be the most cost-effective investment you can make, and it will teach you everything you need to know about treating your space.
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Post by Hexspa on Jun 15, 2018 5:07:10 GMT
Thanks for the help Guys! I have been thinking about using some kind of plywood over the carpet. "Lastly, I'm noticing a lot of 'I don't want, I can't etc.' in your post. I advise you to be aware of that, try to have an open mind, and that'll serve you in your acoustics journey". I'm not trying to have a closed mind. I'm just saying that I can't rip the carpet up right now money wise. I just bought the house and have other things to pay for including acoustic treatment. Right now I'm thinking of putting the desk by the window and maybe putting down some plywood under my drums of the carpet. I am planning of treating the ceiling above the drums and my desk. I'm also thinking of moveable gobos so I can put them behind the drums or vocal mic. Thanks for your tips guys! Ok. It's all good. My opinion is that you leave the carpet as-is. Why would you make it reflective? I never said rip up the carpet.
Specifically, about the negativity, I was referring to 'I don't want the room too dead' and 'I can't put anything by the vent." It's like, why don't you want it dead? Also, you already solved the vent problem in movable panels. Absorption isn't flammable and doesn't totally block air flow in any event.
As far as deadness is concerned, any absorption is good absorption for most home studios. You want absorption everywhere - especially if it's a multi-use room. All your reflections are going to be very immediate and between close parallel surfaces. I don't see any benefit in that.
You can easily add good early reflections via delay or a reverb with those options. I have heard the advice about reflective floors on forums but have never come across it in any white paper or technical book. Be lazy and get the best results.
Now let's move you forward. You need either rigid or fluffy panels. Use rigid for up to 8" in thickness and fluffy beyond that. You should air gap, with or without an angle of any degree, but you can also fill that gap with fluffy.
You need to treat your RFZ as well as corners. Beyond that you can treat the whole surface for additional modal and specular control. After you sort all that you can then consider diffusion.
Someone convince me why you want direct specular reflection in a small room interfering with your recording. Sure, if the ceiling is over 11' high I can understand but even then you'd probably want absorption on it. As I understand it, all reflections should be diffuse and a bare floor isn't going to get you there.
Every single time I see a large SPL null in someone's REW screenshot it's because of a bare surface between the mic and the speaker. You do realize that a mic is a mic and a sound source is a sound source, right? What makes anyone think that giant null is beneficial to general recording?
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Post by Ethan Winer on Jun 15, 2018 18:51:16 GMT
I'm just add that you're all correct. Small rooms are best made as "dead" as possible, though a reflective floor (only!) is acceptable and often useful when recording acoustic instruments. So leave the floor bare there, but have a throw rug you can put down when needed.
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Post by kevut2002 on Jun 17, 2018 17:49:13 GMT
Thanks everyone for you input! I took your advice and am giving an updated picture. That was a joke..I wish that was my room! haha. Anyways I thought those traps with the shelves on top look pretty interesting (the right side with the picture frames on it) . I wonder if I did something like that and had it extend all the way into the corner of my front wall if that would take care of early reflections and bass trapping at the same time? I'm not sure how dead would be too dead Attachments:
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Post by Hexspa on Jun 18, 2018 4:18:39 GMT
Thanks everyone for you input! I took your advice and am giving an updated picture. That was a joke..I wish that was my room! haha. Anyways I thought those traps with the shelves on top look pretty interesting (the right side with the picture frames on it) . I wonder if I did something like that and had it extend all the way into the corner of my front wall if that would take care of early reflections and bass trapping at the same time? I'm not sure how dead would be too dead Nice progress on the room heh. The 'traps with shelves' seem to be more making use of the fact there's a air conditioning unit in the wall-ceiling corner. I totally doubt they did that for any acoustic advantage. While that's probably true, on second look, they've got a lot of treatment going on so maybe they just didn't need that corner treated.
That's not to say it renders the panels useless. Just remember that there tends to be a lot of bass buildup in corners. Though that's true, I've found that not to mean you always need to do a 45 degree panel in all corners.
You're free to treat your room however you choose. I hereby grant you that permission . Again, as far as deadness is concerned, I think you'll lose the will to add more panels before that happens. Then again, it's up to you to either go by taste or by measurable standards set by experts.
To that last point, they have released several guides as to decay distribution, time curve across all frequencies, and SPL criteria. I've posted some of the EBU recommendations here previously so you can search for those. Just keep it simple and treat your RFZ then add bass trapping until you're happy with the low end. After that you can add more panels or diffusion to control reflections.
It's really that easy.
Thanks.
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Post by blaise on Jul 4, 2018 10:20:30 GMT
Hello everyone! I've just seen Ethan's video on youtube titled "all about diffusion" and I am still amazed how the realtrap qrd diffuser changed the sound of the guitar compared to the absorption (12:01 Link to the video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb30CICG68cI'm recently working on improving the sound quality of my (specially the acoustic guitar) recordings. I think, I've finally found what I was looking for, thanks to your video. Since I would like to achieve the (near) similar result what you have achieved with that realtrap, I intend to get a diffuser. Due to the size of my recording place and my financial situation, I need to know whether a custom, carpenter built wood diffuser would help my recordings' sound as much as the realtrap. I have recently talked to a diffuser distributer about the sound quality improvement, and he told me, if the diffuser is only one ft away from the guitar's soundhole, than the sound of the guitar cannot be better, the distance should be bigger, and not the depth, rather the height of the diffuser matters. Needles to say, the distributor suggested me buying his more expensive products. As for the custom diffuser, I've designed the diffuser with 16" height, 14" depth and 0,5 - 1" thick (in cm: 40*40*1-2). I assumed the wells' depth to be constant - at least this is what I've found from the video. I intend to use the diffuser only to improve the quality of my recordings, by putting them by the microphone - on the desk, near to the soundhole of the guitar.Basicly this is the only situation I will use the diffuser. Here goes my question: In your opinion, if I want to achieve such results, will I succeed with the 16"*14"*1" custom built diffuser, or should I purchase a bigger one? Sorry for the long post, and if my english is not appropriate. Thanks for your help, Blaise
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Post by Michael Lawrence on Jul 4, 2018 12:45:36 GMT
Hi Blaise- Although the well depth may appear constant, it is not. QRD stands for Quadratic Residue Diffuser, (Interestingly, QRD is trademarked, while Quadratic Residue Diffuser is not.) Anyway, as Ethan says in the video, a diffuser works by scattering reflections, rather than just bouncing them all back like a flat surface. What this means is that we need a surface that appears "not flat" to a range of different wavelengths. That's where the math comes in. QRDs are built using a mathematically determined pattern of well depths that comes from a group of mathematical calculations using an operation called 'modulo,' which deals with taking the remainder of a series of division operations, or something like that at least. If you want to build your own diffuser and have it actually be diffusive throughout a frequency range, get your hands on a copy of the Master Handbook of Acoustics by F. Alton Everest. I believe the 6th edition is current, coauthored by Ken C. Pohlmann. This is a great book to have if you have any interest whatsoever in acoustics, because it contains an enormous amount of data, but it does contain several QRD design formulas and actually will walk you through the math a little bit. It's not difficult, but it does have to be done correctly to get the final product to work as intended! Hopefully that helps answer your question.
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Post by rock on Jul 4, 2018 16:10:47 GMT
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Post by Ethan Winer on Jul 4, 2018 16:39:11 GMT
I'll just add that an acoustic guitar won't benefit from a diffuser more than six inches deep, and less than three inches isn't useful either. I'm talking about the maximum well depth, not the height and width.
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Post by blaise on Jul 4, 2018 17:12:58 GMT
Thank you very much for all your answers!
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